Racism

I saw Schindler’s List again over Christmas, for the first time in some years. It’s a flawed movie – exactly how flawed is a subject deserving of its own post – but gets a lot more right than wrong and remains, I think, mainstream Hollywood’s best attempt to portray the Holocaust.
While the film is rightly [...]

The saying “Beauty is only skin deep” has yet to register with many British South Asians. The view that fairness is synonymous with beauty is often peddled in the UK’s Asian community and in most cases, it’s the girls who bear the brunt of such racial snobbery.

A while ago, I was having a conversation with friends; the Holocaust came up and we began to tentatively discuss it. After a few minutes, one friend, who had been keeping very quiet, looked up and said, slightly confused: “What even is the Holocaust?”

Anders Breivik is a far-right terrorist, not a madman. It is a difficult verdict for some to process: here is a man who methodically shot dead dozens of idealistic teenagers, either as they ran hyperventilating or stood paralysed with terror.

Student: “Those blowing themselves up and committing atrocities are using religion as an excuse for what they are doing.”
Me: “But you can find justification for all sorts of atrocities against non-believers, apostates and others in the Holy texts.”
Student: “How dare you say that! That is deeply offensive. Lots of us have faith and don’t go around doing the things you say that religious people do.”

The least troubling aspect of the John Terry case for me is the revelation that footballers shout offensive and unpleasant obscenities at rivals in the heat of a football game. Even those of us who cannot lip read surely did not think they were saying ‘please pass me the ball’